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Wednesday, March 19, 2025

De­vel­op­ment banks no longer fund­ing fos­sil fu­el projects

Nigeria wants just energy transition

by

Curtis Williams
1399 days ago
20210519

Nige­ria’s vice pres­i­dent Pro­fes­sor Ye­mi Os­in­ba­jo for what he called a just en­er­gy tran­si­tion for de­vel­op­ing coun­tries and en­er­gy pro­duc­ers like T&T.

Speak­ing yes­ter­day at Co­lum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty’s Glob­al En­er­gy sum­mit the Niger­ian Vice Pres­i­dent in­sist­ed that a just en­er­gy tran­si­tion for de­vel­op­ing economies is cen­tral to the right to sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and pover­ty erad­i­ca­tion which he not­ed is en­shrined in glob­al treaties in­clud­ing the Paris agree­ment.

He raised the spec­tre of sev­er­al Eu­ro­pean coun­tries and de­vel­op­ment fi­nance in­sti­tu­tions ban­ning fur­ther in­vest­ments in fos­sil fu­els.

“Glob­al­ly we are see­ing wealth­i­er na­tions and de­vel­op­ment fi­nance in­sti­tu­tions ban­ning all pub­lic in­vest­ments in fos­sil fu­els, in­clud­ing nat­ur­al gas. Ex­am­ples in­clude the Eu­ro­pean Union, the Unit­ed King­dom, and Den­mark to name a few. As well as spe­cif­ic in­sti­tu­tions such as the Sweed fund from Swe­den, CDC from the UK, the Eu­ro­pean In­vest­ment Bank and the In­vest­ment Fund for de­vel­op­ing coun­tries from Den­mark.”

The Niger­ian vice pres­i­dent said while there are oth­er in­sti­tu­tions that recog­nise that fos­sil fu­els should be bro­ken down in­to dif­fer­ent types of fu­els, for ex­am­ple nat­ur­al gas vs coal pro­duc­tion.

He point­ed to pres­sure be­ing placed on the African De­vel­op­ment Bank to stop fund­ing such projects in Africa.

Pro­fes­sor Os­in­ba­jo said the sit­u­a­tion is made even more glar­ing when one con­sid­ers that coun­tries, in­clud­ing the US, Chi­na, Japan and oth­er large parts of Asia and the EU in­clude nat­ur­al gas as ma­jor pil­lars of their mul­ti-decade de­car­bon­i­sa­tion strat­e­gy. In­clud­ing ac­tive­ly de­vel­op­ing African gas in coun­tries like Mozam­bique, Ghana, Sene­gal and Nige­ria for ex­port to Asia and Eu­rope, while lim­it­ing fi­nanc­ing for gas projects for do­mes­tic use in those same coun­tries.

“Lim­it­ing the de­vel­op­ment of gas projects pos­es dire chal­lenges for African na­tions while mak­ing an in­signif­i­cant dent in glob­al emis­sions...to com­plete­ly end all fos­sil in­vest­ments, in­clud­ing in­vest­ments in nat­ur­al gas is not in the in­ter­est of any­one.”

Nige­ria’s vice pres­i­dent warns that his ap­proach does not ap­pear to suf­fi­cient­ly take in­to ac­count the prin­ci­ples of com­mon but dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and leav­ing no one be­hind that are en­shrined in the glob­al treaties around sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment and cli­mate ac­tion.

Call­ing the term “en­er­gy tran­si­tion” a cu­ri­ous one Pro­fes­sor Os­in­ba­jo asked the con­fer­ence: what would eq­ui­ty look like in the tran­si­tion? Or what is the case for eq­ui­ty?

He ar­gued that in an­swer­ing this ques­tion ex­clud­ing South Africa, the re­main­ing one bil­lion peo­ple in sub-Sa­ha­ran Africa, are ser­viced by a pow­er gen­er­a­tion ca­pac­i­ty of just 81 gi­gawatt and they have con­tributed less than one per cent of cu­mu­la­tive co2 emis­sions.

The Niger­ian vice pres­i­dent posit­ed that most coun­tries on the African con­ti­nent are low emis­sion en­er­gy-poor coun­tries, with per capi­ta emis­sion be­tween 0.8 and one tonne of co2 and an av­er­age of less than two tonnes if North­ern and South­ern Africa are added in.

“So even tripling elec­tric­i­ty con­sump­tion in these coun­tries, bar­ing South Africa, would add just 0.6 per cent to glob­al emis­sions. By com­par­i­son the US emis­sions stands at 15.5 tonnes per capi­ta while on av­er­age Eu­rope has per capi­ta emis­sion of 6.5 tonnes,” Pro­fes­sor Os­in­ba­jo not­ed.

He asked what is the case for jus­tice and fair­ness?

Pro­fes­sor Os­in­ba­jo said its not easy to tran­si­tion from the use of nat­ur­al gas for in­dus­try or the pro­duc­tion of fer­tilis­er, and cook­ing and it is to move away from pow­er gen­er­a­tion.

He said Nige­ria and oth­er African coun­tries were try­ing to tran­si­tion from petrol to CNG and LPG to re­place a huge amounts of char­coal and kerosene, in the process sav­ing mil­lions of lives lost due to in­door char­coal cook­ing.

He said nat­ur­al gas use will strength­en pow­er trans­mis­sion and help the cause of re­new­ables.

“Gas is pos­si­bly the most sen­si­ble tran­si­tion fu­el that we can find and clear­ly that no­tion that gas is an ac­cept­able tran­si­tion fu­el is one that ap­pears to be ac­cept­able to sev­er­al coun­tries,” he end­ed.

(Ed­i­tor’s note: T&T is a ma­jor ex­porter of LNG, fer­tilis­ers and us­es on­ly nat­ur­al gas in its elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion.)

Cur­tis Williams


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